Ludicrous!

This flooding issue is really absurd. For one thing, I was told that Pchum Ben usually marks the end of the rainy season, but that was over a month ago and it rained for hours last night. I like rain, but not when it ruins people's lives.

Sarah attends a Khmer-language church in Russey Keo, a poorer area where the floods have been especially bad. Often, the church can't meet in its normal location due to flooding, so it meets on the side of the road, several blocks away. Often! Last night, she wanted to go to Bible study at someone's house, but was told that motos can barely get through there because of the knee-deep standing "water." (Don't even THINK about the diseases in it.) Anyone who can has moved in with friends or even found a new house. This neighborhood is only two or three miles from my house!

This is not a new problem. But it's been vastly exacerbated in the last year or so by a building project that involves filling in a lake with sand, along with forced evictions. Many locals protested the project to the government. The government now drains downtown runoff water into this neighborhood as well. See a connection? It's hard to say, but they think it's to punish the protesters. Brilliant, eh? "It's already flooded. Let's send more water that way." Last year, a high school closed for months in this area because it was under four feet of water. Thousands of residents saw an improvement when the city paused in filling the lake, but now the project has begun again. Japan is helping Cambodia plan an adequate sewage/drainage system for the city, but I have no idea how long that'll take, or how many officials will get rich off the funding.

So, just to recap:
1. Heavy rains => floods
2. Building new developments => filling in a lake => floods and protests
3. Protests => draining other parts of the city here => floods
4. Japanese aid => rich officials and hopefully improved drainage in the future

If my blog is shut down next time you log on, you'll know that Prime Minister Hun Sen found it and that I'm on a plane across the Pacific.

Hitler on my kitchen counter

Can you identify the golden-brown object in the center of this photograph?
Read on for the answer.

Because Logos provided us with many dishes and utensils before we moved in, it took us a while to notice it on the kitchen counter. By the time I arrived on July 25, Sarah had been there for several days to get set up, and both of us never thought about it. One day, though, Sarah approached me.

"So I was looking at our neighbors' balcony," she commented, "and they have a tiny wooden house on it."

"Oh, really?"

"It looks kind of like our little house, but it has incense in it. Do you think it could be...?"

Oh, dear, I think she's right. I had just noticed it for the first time that week, because Sarah had started to leave her keys on top of it. Brilliant!, I thought, you'd never lose them that way. I hadn't thought about its intended purpose, though, except maybe as a souvenir. Wow, I felt slow.

"I can't believe I've been leaving my keys on the spirit house!" Sarah groaned. "What must the neighbors have thought, if they noticed it through the glass door? What should we do with it?"

We knew that most Buddhist families had some kind of spirit house inside to honor their ancestors, similar to the shrines we'd seen outside, but we'd never seen a spirit house. We concluded that since Logos wouldn't have bought it for us, it must have been a housewarming gift from our landlords. One which we had obviously failed to properly respect. But did it deserve our respect? Or is it creepy, even dangerous, to have a home for whatever spirits drop by, sitting right on your kitchen counter?

We concluded that it was time to get rid of it. But how? A spirit house isn't something you just regift. No, throwing it out was the best option. We prayed nobody would find it in the trash and feel offended. Picking it up, we noticed a large, disgusting bug clinging to it. "Hey, doesn't Buddhism teach that evil people reincarnate as bugs?" We decided that, if Buddhism is true, we must have Hitler's spirit clinging to that cute little house. No, thank you!

Tossing it in the trash, we heard the house crunch as we closed the lid. Good riddance!

Teacher Retreat at Koh Kong

This is how much Logos loves us: they gave us a three-day all-expense-paid retreat at the lovely town of Koh Kong! This is what a bad blogger I am: it was nearly a month ago. But better late than never, right? It was my first trip outside Phnom Penh since I arrived three months ago, and a meaningful time for me in many ways.

Bathing suits are not big here: you wear your clothes in, or if you're little, you skinny-dip like the boy in the center. We didn't know this family, but they were tickled to be photographed.

One thing that it showed me is that the Logos administration is flexible. At first, they envisioned the retreat as a seminar for expatriate (foreign) teachers on handling stress. But some of the teachers approached them about including the Khmer (Cambodian) teachers and assistants as well. The administration extended the invitation to them, even though it meant exceeding their budget, and I was so glad. The time I spent with Khmer staff on the retreat left some of my most significant memories.

Chenda and Srey Roth were in my small group. They were so much fun at the waterfall, too!

We all crammed into three vans on a blazingly hot Wednesday afternoon. When we arrived, though, it was blessedly cool and damp – typical for this town on the Thai border. The chilly weather all three days was a welcome respite from the constant sweat of Phnom Penh, although by “chilly” I mean “I wished I had brought jeans.” It rained a good bit: enough to turn the dirt roads into mush, but not enough to stop us from hiking to a “waterfall” (aka stream). The hotel provided the only hot showers I’ve had since July, which are also the only ones I’ve wanted. They say PP will cool off soon – we’ll see.

The waterfall wasn't that impressive, but I loved the scenery around it!

The seminars included beautiful times of prayer and worship, talks by various staff, small-group discussions, and everyone performing skits on methods of stress relief. The latter were hilarious and a good exercise in cross-cultural communication. Most of the Khmer had never been in any kind of skit before, and were understandably scared about them. So when the first group (topic: saying “no” to commitments) talked about relieving stress by refusing to do the skit, it was perfect! My group had to discuss a long time to come to a consensus about our skit. Brainstorming and ruling out ideas are not emphasized in Khmer culture, so our Khmer members kind of felt stuck doing whatever the other American and I suggested, despite our urgings to the contrary. Other highlights included “Monsieur Grenouille” (Mr. Frog), explaining the French art of massage, and a big Italian guy role-playing as an elderly Khmer woman.

Gotta love the safety standards: a young boy unplugs a drain 3 stories above the pool

It was fun to get a glimpse of life in this sleepy town, and to hear about the provinces from Khmer staff. (Hardly any Cambodian today has always lived in Phnom Penh, given its recent history. And even those who have usually still have relatives in the provinces.) Passing hut after thatch-roofed hut on the trip, with vast open spaces in between, made me wonder if I'd ever live in the provinces, and how I'd like it. Honestly, I'm guessing that I will at some point - albeit maybe not in one of those little huts. All I know is that when I returned to Phnom Penh, I was glad to be back. It may be hot and crowded, but it's familiar, and it felt like I was coming home.

The view from the 4-hour car ride: lush scenery = my favorite stress relief

Your creativity needed!

I have an urgent request for your help. This is important. It involves chocolate for me. (And I can give you chocolate when I get back to the US sometime, if you want.)

Logos is moving to a new building in the spring. We're leaving our current location for a new school that will be starting: a Christian school for middle-class Khmer students. They're looking for a name (in English) for the school. The administrator is offering "a chocolate prize" to those with good suggestions.

So, in case you got lost along the way, let me summarize. If you help me think of a good name...
1. You could have a Cambodian school with the name of your choosing.
2. I could have chocolate.

Oh, wouldn't that be lovely?

Portrait of a Phnom Penh Tourist

I need to get better at sharing links to Facebook when I post new photos there. It takes a while to load each individually on this blog. However, glimpses of my shining face - is it delight at being in Cambodia, or is it just sweat? - are only a click away. Here's my first photo album, entitled "My New Life." Others, courtesy of my roomie Sarah, are below. We and several friends declared Friday, September 18, to be our official "Phnom Penh Tourist Day." (It was a national holiday due to Pchum Ben festivities.)


Our first stop was the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, converted from a school during the Khmer Rouge atrocities. It looks eerily similar to other local schools, and they've changed hardly anything inside since the prison stopped operating. But apparently it's been cleaned up a bit in recent years.

Each of its 20,000 prisoners was subjected to these rules upon arrival. Seven survived. Tearey, a Khmer-American woman who works at Logos, was with us and told us many stories from her childhood fleeing the Khmer Rouge in the jungle. It was really powerful - I hadn't expected her to open up so much.

One of dozens of torture rooms, with shackles, a box that served as a toilet, and a food dish.

Each room in this corridor held 16 cells, about 2 feet wide. The cells, like the rooms, have no doors, because there was nowhere to escape to.

Startlingly bright and cheerful after Tuol Sleng, our next stop was the King's Palace and the Silver Pagoda. Apparently the king still lives there, but tourists are only permitted to view the grounds outside.

Susie could feel her heart take wing when she discovered the shrubbery!

Left to right: Susie, me, Sarah

The World Tetris Championships...

...should be held right here in Phnom Penh. We would OWN them. I'm convinced. Well, maybe not Tetris. Maybe it's that snake game that we should host the championships for. Or even speed-texting. All I know is that a cell phone is all that stands between many Khmer guys and Death By Boredom.

"Waiting" seems part of the job description for house helpers, guards, moto drivers, food vendors, and many others. One house on my way to school always has 3 uniformed guards sitting around, watching me walk. I pass probably 10 moto and tuk-tuk drivers in my 5-minute walk, waiting for passengers. Guys sit outside the car wash, which rarely has cars or motos to clean. I bet 30% of Phnom Penh males spend more than half their day sitting around with their cell phones. (Girls? I'm not sure. Some are vendors or collect recycled goods, but mostly they're not outside as much. They're more likely to be house helpers - cooking and cleaning - or to work in the schools, run stands in the market, raise children, etc. I'm sure many girls and guys also work in factories, unseen by my eyes.)

The lounging guys make it weird for me, because as a girl, I'm not supposed to make eye contact or acknowledge them at all. But I pass them every day, and they have no qualms about staring at me, as they would at any obvious foreigner. Let's face it: a white person is 60% more interesting than Round 92 of the day on Tetris. In the US, if I passed someone daily, we'd exchange a smile, nod, or quick "how are you," but that could get me into trouble here. So I focus on the road until there's a little kid or a woman for me to smile at. Sometimes they even make a joke out of it, staring at me from a few feet away so it's really unnatural for me not to look at them, then cracking up. I sometimes glance at them out of the corner of my eye, but I'm trying to be good and not act familiar with them. (This is also a challenge when I'm in a tuk-tuk facing backward, toward all the moto drivers looking straight ahead.)

State of bewilderment

culture shock - a state of bewilderment and distress experienced by an individual who is suddenly exposed to a new, strange, or foreign social and cultural environment.

In France, I learned about the different stages of culture shock: first you think everything's more or less the same as at home, then you think it's fun that it's different, then you get angry with the differences, then you feel sad, and finally you grow to accept the differences and maybe even adopt some. I don't think I've been going through clear stages here: I've mixed them all up regarding various aspects of life, and I'll probably continue to for a while. But while I don't feel distressed, I have felt bewildered by several phenomena here.

For example, it's rainy season, so on most days, it rains hard in the afternoon or evening. The rain doesn't shock me. But the drain clogs do: even after a moderate storm, Logos' street is often submerged by a few inches. One teaching assistant has a first-floor apartment in a particularly low area (Phnom Penh is mostly flat): her house has been knee-deep in water for weeks now. That means she can't ever put her baby down. Her family has been getting sick as a result, so she stayed behind to teach while her husband, mother, and baby went to stay with relatives in the provinces for a week. They can't afford to move, so they just have to deal with the water several months a year.

Corruption is engrained deeply in Khmer culture, and I think it'll take me years to see how pervasive it is. But one place where it shows is in the school system. This year, as usual, test answers were for sale outside most schools on the day of the national high school exams. Unlike previous years, teachers were supposed to confiscate those booklets and fail students caught cheating. They didn't catch everyone, and probably didn't try to. But the failure rate jumped from almost zero to 80%. Yes, only 20% of students passed the exam this year. One Khmer person pointed out that it's futile to change the high school exit exam when students have never taken a test without cheating during their entire educational career. It continues in college: students routinely bribe teachers so that they can cut classes for weeks at a time and still earn passing grades. As a result, employers value experience over degrees: they have no idea if a prospective employee actually learned anything in college.

House helpers are another source of bewilderment. Most foreign families and wealthier Khmer families have one or more. Rich families have many: a guard or two at the gate, a cook, a chauffeur for their shiny black SUV with the giant "Lexus" logo, a nanny, a Mr. Fix-It guy. House helpers earn about $50-80 a month, but also expect help when they run into difficulties like illness, a moto breakdown, family trouble, etc. In this hierarchical society, they are not just employees but clients under a patron. They're often left in charge of children, but without the real authority to discipline children. So there are children who talk back to their nannies and hit them, and there are many children who do whatever they want when the parents are gone: stay up all night on school nights, watch uncensored TV, whatever.

I'm slowly discovering more about Khmer culture, but hearing about it and even seeing it doesn't mean that I understand it. And that's OK.